How to Move Files Between Cloud Storage Services

Even as we move slowly but surely away from personal hard drives and towards cloud-based storage services to stash our files, one thing remains the same: your own your data, and you should have the freedom to use and store it as you wish. While cloud services offer tremendous convenience, they are part of businesses that are subject to changes in their terms and are not impervious to financial or technical failure—and that's why it's important to ensure that you're always able to access and move your files across services and keep them secure. Plus, file transfers can cost you a lot of time, bandwidth and physical storage space.

Today, we're going to look at a couple of apps that allow us to move files from one storage service to another—and you can try them before you commit to a paid plan. So whether you're using Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or even an FTP server to store your files, this guide will take you through the process of backing up and migrating moving your data safely, easily and quickly. Let's get started!

For Enterprise and Pro Users: Mover.io

Mover.io offers a robust solution to schedule file transfers across a range of services suitable for regular website and database backups, as well as for migrating files between all your preferred storage apps.

Mover already supports multiple accounts over 20 services that it calls Connectors, including popular choices like Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and Box, as well as hosts like MediaTemple, Dreamhost, Rackspace, Amazon S3 and even Sharepoint and FTP/SFTP protocols—and regularly adds new services to the list. You can run file transfers whenever you want, or schedule them to run as often as you'd like.

Because Mover is great with FTP, web hosts and databases, you can use it not only to migrate files, but also to back up your CMS-based websites and self-hosted web apps (including one of our latest favorites for bookmarking, Unmark).

With support for databases, Mover is great for backing up CMS sites and self-hosted apps

Transferring Files with Mover

Mover's simple interface makes it a cinch to copy files from one service to another. To begin, sign up for a plan, and in the empty dashboard, click Select Source to add your first connector. Click New in the pop-up and select a connector from the list. Depending on what you choose, you'll need to either log in to the service (for apps like Google Drive) or enter your login details (for FTP or MySQL). Now repeat the same process for the destination storage service, and you'll find your files and folders from both services listed side by side.

Mover makes it easy to migrate and back up files between services

Next, select the files and folders you want to copy to your destination service by clicking the empty circles in the source files column. Similarly, select a folder in your destination service, or click the New Folder button to create a new destination folder. Click Run on the right to begin the transfer process, and your files will be on their way.

Note: You can also check the box zip your files before transferring. Bear in mind that enabling this option might cause errors if your file destination has a file size limit: OneDrive has a limit of 120MB, so it may may sense to leave this box unchecked.

Schedule a Regular Transfer

If you'd rather schedule a regular backup of your files, click the Schedule Later tab and set up an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly schedule by indicating the time and frequency of your transfers. Click Save to confirm your settings and set up your schedule.

Schedule hourly, daily, weekly or monthly backups with Mover

View the Status of Your File Transfers

To see how your file transfers are going, click Activity at the top of the screen. You'll find a list of all your active and queued transfers here. Click on any of them to view more details. You can download a transaction log for each of your transfers, and rerun any transfers that have encountered errors by clicking the buttons at the bottom of these details.

View transfer status and rerun errant transfers in Mover

For Power Users:Otixo

If you've got files all over the cloud across a range of services, and want to be able to access, download and share them easily from one place, Otixo is just the app for you. In addition to bringing together several well-known cloud services including Bitcasa, Huddle, CloudMe, Cubby, SugarSync and even Facebook for photos, Otixo also lets you search across your connected apps, preview and launch files, and copy files between services just by dragging and dropping.

Otixo handles a range of services_in one place

Transferring Files Between Services with Otixo

Sign up for a plan, and on the Welcome screen, click Connect Your First Cloud Service, select an app and log in with your details. You'll then be able to view your files from that service. Add another service (or several) the same way, by clicking the + next to My Cloud Services in the left column. Now, to copy files from one service to another, simply right-click a file or folder in one service, and click Copy in the context menu. Next, click on your destination service in the left column, and click Paste. You can also navigate into a folder and then click Paste.

Simply drag and drop to copy files across services in Otixo

You can also drag and drop files, just like you would in your desktop file browser. To select multiple files, Ctrl/Cmd + click on the files you want, or Shift + click two files to select the range of files between them. You can then right-click or drag these to copy them across to another service.

Otixo also lets you manage your files like you would with individual apps, using the toolbar at the top of the screen. Simply click a file to preview (works with images, documents and audio), launch or download it, rename or delete it, or even share a link to the file via email from within the app with the ability to cause the link to expire or password-protect the file.

Share files easily with Otixo

The Best of the Rest

There are even more options on the web to move your files across cloud services. For starters, Drive from Jolicloud lets you manage your file storage accounts, including Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, MediaFire, OneDrive, Put.io and SugarSync, with similar but fewer features than Otixo. It's free to connect all your accounts, but the ability to copy files across services costs €5/month.

Zapier is a brilliant IFTTT-like app that power users will enjoy. It works in the same way and requires an additional step or two to set up, but has a larger range of apps and triggers to play with. In addition to backing up and copying files between cloud storage services, Zapier can do wonders with your files from all your favorite web services, including downloading your Gmail attachments to Google Drive, save YouTube videos to OneDrive, get files shared from Basecamp into your Box account and even create new Evernote note from Dropbox files.

Set up Zapier to handle file transfers and backups

Conclusion

It's great that there are now several easy ways to copy, move and manage your files across cloud storage services, so that you have total control over your data. Plus, you can finally stop worrying about your physical storage that could easily get damaged, lost or stolen.

What are some ways you handle your files in the cloud? Let us know in the comments below.